Quoting Dion <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Without disparaging the journalitic quality of the article, I would > challenge that not nearly enough testing was performed to take any > meaningful information away on the Pros or Cons of a fully compiled system. > > Also some of the gains that come from compiling a source are smaller > memory footprint binaries....none of that side of things was explored.
Wait a moment. The article said they used the -O3 flag to gcc, did it not? Unless gcc is broken in Gentoo this is supposed to create larger binaries than the standard -O2 flag that Mandrake at least adopts as default (I would expect the same of other distros but don't actually know). If you wanted to optimise for size you'd need to specify the -Os flag. But yes, whilst I'm aware that all this (and more) is possible in Gentoo, I imagine the reason they didn't explore the shrinkage of their binaries is that they should have ended up being larger :) The amount of memory dedicated to actually running the program should be the same though -- it's the same code doing the same stuff. Writing code that allocates 1GB of memory and then building with -O6 won't magically reduce the memory requirements so that you can run it in < 1GB of memory. > > I would like to see a more extensive exploration of the gains and/or > losses in a Gentoo style distribution. Oh for sure. I don't think anyone is treating this as conclusive. It does say to me though that optimising all your software to the max doesn't guarantee significantly better performance, which was roughly what they were investigating. Actually no, I'm reading that in -- if running gcc counts as "better use of your hardware" then their comments about the scrapping of the OpenOffice.org test suggest that Gentoo makes far better use of your hardware than anything available today :) James. > -----Original Message----- > > >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > >Behalf Of Erik de Castro Lopo > >Sent: Sunday, 3 August 2003 4:34 PM > >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >Subject: [SLUG] Benefits of source distro (Gentoo) somewhat elusive :-) > > > >Hi all, > > > >Though people might find this interesting. > > > >Intial testing comparing a source distro (Gentoo) with binary distros > >(Debian and Mandrake) shows that Gentoo offers no speed advantages > >even though it is compiled for the exact machine type it is going > >to run on. > > > >http://articles.linmagau.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=i > >ndex&req=viewarticle&artid=227 > > > >Makes Debain (and Mandrake) look really god for the lack of messing > >about required of Gentoo. > > > >Erik > > > > > > -- > "Never ascribe to malice that which may adequately be explained by > incompetence." - Napoleon Bonaparte > > > -- > SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ > More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug > -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
